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What would Mahiru have done? What would Shidou have done?
These questions resound over and over in Yuno’s mind. She couldn’t save Mahiru like Shidou would have. After all, she was only roleplaying the best nurse she could have. She can’t stay blindly optimistic in the face of adversity like Mahiru would have. After all, she only just started seeing the worth in human life.
In this situation, Yuno thinks Mahiru could’ve found a way to bring a ray of light into this hopeless abyss. In this situation, Yuno thinks Shidou could’ve aided everyone.
Yuno cannot really do either of those things.
Mahiru and Shidou brought a special warmth despite their immoral murders. A warmth that died alongside them, only continued through Yuno’s small efforts to keep it alive through herself.
However, it’s not a cold feeling in Yuno that replaces that warmth—rather, it’s merely nothing. Yuno doesn’t know or understand.
The only thing Yuno knows? She spent too much time together with everyone here in this prison.
She knows that, because when she stares at the current Fuuta Kajiyama—or rather, the third prisoner, right beside Yuno—she feels an odd sense of grief. Even though Fuuta is alive, Yuno mourns the death of his old self.
The death of the Fuuta that readily believed Yuno’s silly teasing that Es would attack him. The death of the Fuuta that loudly proclaimed how unjust the lack of internet in the prison was. The death of the Fuuta who childishly pouted at tomatoes.
That Fuuta was shoved deep down in his own heart, not to be seen again, instead covered up by this religious, salvation-preaching version of himself. Fuuta was still the exact same person deep down, Yuno knew that, but she can’t help but mourn.
That’s all she does lately: mourn and mourn again. Everything Yuno observes over lately just gives her a sense of new nostalgia she never felt before.
Yuno’s wandering. That’s another thing she’s done more as of late—just wander around the prison layout. Take in details she might’ve missed before. Try not to gaze coldly at others.
She ends up in the corridor hallway, which is basically empty. The end leading back to the panopticon is darker than the other end, which is curious to Yuno.
However, her thoughts are suddenly stopped by quickly paced footsteps. Yuno turns, her breath hitches.
A person pretending to be Fuuta Kajiyama meets her eyes. Some strange anomaly of Fuuta, wearing a white shawl that donned some sort of colorful, childish symbol, and headwear, that covered his bad eye, to match.
Yuno’s eyes must’ve prompted the question she immediately thought, because Fuuta immediately opens his mouth.
“You need… help. Salvation. Is that… right, Yuno? It must be hard…” Fuuta mutters quickly. He sounds frantic, to say the least. Already, he’s clapped his hands together, and his posture is stiff.
Yuno doesn’t avert her dull gaze from Fuuta’s piercing one. In doing that, Yuno realizes something. She realizes she was not the only one who had died and froze over with the first verdicts. Fuuta’s flame, once so violent inside of him, had extinguished.
Strangely, Yuno feels like she knew that all along, but it’s only now that she truly, truly realized.
“Come,” Fuuta holds out his hand with a grin that bares all his crooked teeth. “Let’s go, together, Yuno.”
Yuno clutches her hand to her chest. “I won’t.”
Fuuta makes a small sound. One that sounds like a gasp of breath someone takes before they make an impulsive argument, or one of pained surprise. His hand drops.
Before Fuuta can say anything, Yuno makes sure to continue. “Because… This suffering, it’s mine to bear. So I don’t want to be saved by someone else…”
That was the cold, hard truth. Yuno’s mind flickers back to Mahiru and Shidou when she says the word “saved.” How frozen her heart was. How she yearned to be adored for the nihilistic person she was deep down, how terribly she wished for someone to stay after sex. Yuno always thought her heart would only be melted through the intimate act of giving one another sensuality until someone finally stayed. Until someone finally saw past Yuno’s body and her facades.
How wrong Yuno had been. There was a whole plethora of warmth to be discovered even without that. The love Mahiru and Shidou had was nothing like what Yuno had sought for, yet it warmed her more than anything she’d done before.
Fuuta’s voice takes Yuno out of her thoughts and back into her temperate reality.
“… Why not?” Fuuta says in a single breath. All his words come out in strangled, hectic strings lately. “There’s no point in carrying it all by yourself and dying.”
Yuno listens. She doesn’t speak, only listens as Fuuta takes another sharp breath. Watches as Fuuta’s good eye flickers from annoyance, to confusion, to desperation.
“T—To live in this world, we need hope! We need friends, companions, who forgive each-other! Otherwise… Otherwise—!” Fuuta exclaims. His palms are no longer placed against each-other, instead, they’re placed over his heart, his fingers grasping into the white shawl.
“I’m sorry,” Yuno finally cuts the other off, sort of in a mercy-kill manner. “I didn’t mean to blame you.”
Yuno taps her fingertips together. For once, words don’t easily come to her. Not that she’s ever understood the deep-seated feelings inside of herself, but rather, that she’s never once tried to materialize them into oral word.
“I’m thankful, that you tried to help me,” Yuno eventually articulates. Fuuta makes a small hum that sounds closer to a grunt.
Though Yuno hasn’t broken eye contact once, she notices Fuuta’s iris has flickered away multiple times. In this moment, Fuuta’s head is downcast. Yuno simply stares at the cloud symbol on his headwear. The colorful, vibrant design does seem lively, happy.
Yuno wonders what it’s derived from, since it’s a little ominous despite the fun appearance.
“If… that saved Fuuta, then I’m glad. If it helped you avoid hurting yourself, then I’m glad,” Yuno says with a small, easy breath. She gives a smile for only a second, because she truly wants to smile, before it falls again.
Yuno steals another moment to think. “Yeah…” she begins, sounding satisfied. “That’s what I truly feel.”
“I still don’t understand, Yuno,” Fuuta says with his eyebrow furrowed, his gaze still downcasted. “Why would you want to bear it alone…? Having people, friends… to carry the burden with you, that’s good!”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” Yuno replies in a consoling manner. “I understand… how nice it is, to have people who care so much, now.”
“Then!” Fuuta interjects. “Why? Why don’t you want to be saved? It’s such a lovely feeling, see? I feel brand new, happier, too…!”
Yuno shakes her head. Fuuta’s gaze had increased in hysteria the longer he spoke, but it never met Yuno’s again.
Yet again, Yuno’s thoughts are jumbled with how she feels in response to Fuuta’s question. It’s an intriguing inquiry, she’ll give him that.
However, her answer remains the same: it is her suffering and her’s alone. Yuno wants to understand her suffering, feel it, and try to absolve herself of it without being told by other people how to do so. She will always hate arbitrary judgements. Deciding that someone deserved punishment just because you don’t like what they’re doing is something Yuno can’t ever truly personally agree with.
Even if Yuno never absolves herself of her pain, she wants to at least die knowing she tried to understand all the intricacies of both mirth and misery. That she tried to find the right way to heal. That she died trying to place the puzzle pieces of her identity together to form a unique end result.
Yuno knows this: she will die knowing what genuine warmth felt like via the hands of a friend.
There’s another thing Yuno knows, too. Yuno can tell, for it’s obvious for someone like her, that Fuuta isn’t any happier at all. Like herself, he is simply deluding himself on something that’s making him forget the painful things.
Even then, though, Yuno won’t mention it, because she knows it won’t help. Something, or someone, will come along and make Fuuta realize true happiness doesn’t come with a happy cloud symbol. Just like Yuno.
“It’s as I said. I wish to endure it alone,” Yuno reiterates softly.
Fuuta looks at her solemnly, maybe pitifully. Yuno still can’t stand pitying glances, even now. He opens his mouth, closes it, then sighs. “Alright. I understand. Then you won’t allow yourself salvation?”
Yuno shakes her head again. “That’s not it. Simply… I’ll save myself.” She omits the fact that it may be impossible to do that in this prison.
Fuuta’s expression falters into a sort of grimace. For a moment, he looks angry, even jealous and envious. Yuno’s expression, however, stays the same dull face.
“I see, then,” Fuuta states. “You’re… brave, huh. You want to go alone.”
Yuno tilts her head ever so much. She wouldn’t put it that way, really. How she would put it, though, she isn’t really sure.
“Still… Do you not wish to be forgiven?” Fuuta asks quietly.
“Hm… I don’t know. People forgiving one another. I don’t really get it,” Yuno casually replies. “What does that mean to Fuuta?”
The only sound for a moment is the muffled cries and movements of other prisoners in the panopticons that echoed off the spherical walls. Those noises, a reminder of what comes when you’re forgiven, accepted or unforgiven, rejected. Fuuta’s gaze falls flat, as he grins weakly.
Fuuta’s answer is a single word. A vague word that could mean an abundance of things once explained in detail.
“Companionship,” Fuuta replies, his tone fixed undoubtedly. With that, Fuuta turns around, supposedly deciding it was now enough, it was time to take his leave, he had already put in his best effort to recruit Yuno. However, he doesn’t leave without a final word.
“Yuno?”
“Fuuta?”
“… …Could we have been friends?” Fuuta asks regretfully, more as an afterthought or an acted-upon impulse. His fists are clenched tight on the hem of his collared shirt; his head is hung low.
“Eh?” Yuno gasps surprisedly before she can stop herself. “What do you mean?”
Silence. The sound of a breath being taken. Her question is not answered.
Fuuta finally dully concludes, “I… No, nevermind.” With that, Fuuta walks back into the darkness that was the panopticon. Yuno watches the longer belts on the back of Fuuta’s uniform drag on the floor, the metal end dragging gratingly against the ground.
Then, Fuuta, and the ends of his belts, are gone in the dark shadows. And Yuno knows she will have to go back into that same darkness.
Yuno holds her hands close to her chest. She roughly holds her wrist in her hand as she stares at the ground. There isn’t much to do, there wasn’t ever much to do.
So Yuno just sits on the ground in the corner and hugs herself. Puts her head in her knees, feels as her newly short hair falls. She lets the walls be her comfort, her warmth, just for a bit. Then she’ll return to her cell and repeat everything all the same.
… Small echoes of voices overtake the thoughts in her own mind; they steal the vacancy like it’s theirs, not Yuno’s. Yuno damns them, for they never once gave her the care and warmth she so desired.
Yuno gives a small sigh and thinks back to Fuuta’s question. …Herself and Fuuta would’ve made for a strange but warm friendship, Yuno thinks, if not for the circumstances of this slaughterhouse called MILGRAM.
How absurd to wonder about that, Yuno thinks as she giggles solemnly to herself. Never once did she think she’d find herself caring so much about a friendship she didn’t and wouldn’t ever have.
Involving herself with people like this… Yuno really had changed.